The bureaucratic politics in developing Forest Management Unit (FMU) after the forestry decentralization in South Sulawesi province

Abstract

The construction of Forest Management Unit (FMU) in South Sulawesi province created uncertainty for the FMU development. The institutional transformation of FMU from 16 FMU to 24 FMU has a lag impact development of FMU and waste an invested budget. This study analyzed the formal and informal dimensions of the FMU bureaucracy by using the Weberian tradition to reveal the facts, especially for the main duties, function and authority in forming its institution. The research was conducted at Forestry Service in South Sulawesi province from May up to September 2020. In this case the participants were observed trough the depth interviews and studied the dates of 2019 and 2020 to collect the primary and secondary data; a stakeholder analysis was carried out to achieve the research objectives. The results of the study found 1) The formal dimension in the form of a) Technical Implementation Unit in the area has a difficulty in coordinating the local government due to the resisting of some district governments presence of FMU, b) The FMU operational budget was inadequate and uneven divided proportionally 2) The informal dimension in the form of a) The increase number of FMU was carried out to append the structural positions that were lost due to the Branch of forestry service abolition, b) There were six district Governments were still averse to hand over the forestry assets to the Provincial Government so that the total asset acquisition value was IDR 4,991,898,137.63.